Dreams of La Pâtisserie

It is hard to know where our goals and dreams begin, but for Conner Strackman, our 2023 AFA Scholarship recipient, it all started several years back delighting his family members in making delicious eggnog as well as experiencing joy in baking cakes for his family. 

 With the support of his family, he attended the Amaury Guichons Pastry Academy in Las Vegas for ten weeks which served to reinforce his desire to master the art of making pastry. 

This high school junior now has a goal of going to France to master the art of pastry once he finishes high school.  He knows that creating pâtisserie requires training, and his desire is to attend the Ecole Ducasse by Alain Ducasse in France to get that training to become a licensed maître pâtissier (master pastry chef).

His teacher notes his motivation when she told us, “Conner started the new Express French class at the Alliance Francaise last September.  This class meets.two times a week for one and a half hours each.  Amazingly, he showed from the very beginning a great motivation and dedication for studying French.and after a few weeks,  it became noticeable that he was able to ask questions and formulate sentences in French.with his classmates.  His passion is "la pâtisserie" therefore he plans to go to France to master the art of making pastry "a la francaise" that is why he chose to spend three hours of his time improving his French.”

Conner acknowledges that balancing full-time in school, his part-time job at Plate by Dzintra , building content creation (check out his Instagram feed at Conner_Pastry), and saving money to move to France can be

challenging but he is definitely willing to do what it takes.  He went through his detailed weekly schedule and what he works on each day to achieve this goal.  It is impressive how self-motivated he is.

While he has not yet been to France, he has been also been pleased with how his class at AFA has also widened his knowledge of different locations other than Paris.  While he is not yet sure which campus he may attend classes at in France, we are pretty sure that he will be a success where every he goes.

Congratulations, Conner!  We look forward to following your la pâtisserie  journey!